Ultracold atoms trapped in subwavelength potentials

Caroline Busquet (1) , Maxime Bellouvet (1) , Hugo Salvador Vásquez Bullón (1) , Jin-Yi Zhang (1) , Simon Bernon (1) , Philippe Bouyer (1)

1 LP2N - Laboratoire Photonique, Numérique et Nanosciences

Ultra-cold atoms systems used as quantum simulators offer an alternative way to simulate many-body systems behaviour in condensed matter. Indeed, we can create artificial matter with optical lattices : the stationnary wave reproduces the potential wells in the crystalline structure. Moreover, the big advantage of using cold atoms is that the parameters of the simulated crystal can be well controlled so that we can understand the electrical and magnetism properties of the condensed matter such as conductivity, ferromagnetism ...The common approach for generating optical lattices is interfering two laser beams in one dimension. And in the new ongoing project, we are going to produce lattices by irradiating a nanostructure gold layer, which can realize sub-wavelength optical lattices due to the surface plasmon resonance and Casimir-Polder effects.

Domaines: Gaz Quantiques [cond-mat.quant-gas]

Caroline Busquet, Maxime Bellouvet, Hugo Salvador Vásquez Bullón, Jin-Yi Zhang, Simon Bernon, et al.. Ultracold atoms trapped in subwavelength potentials . 21st Young Atomic Opticians conference, Apr 2015, Zürich, Switzerland. ⟨hal-01585067⟩